“Were there any other houses close by?”
Willow once again shook her head.
“Okay, don’t worry.We’ll figure it out,” El told her.
El wasn’t really sure how they’d figure it out.Aside from Willow’s wound and nowhere to take her to tend to it properly, El was naked, and her only option of covering herself was to shift back, which made getting help difficult.As if her worries weren’t already overwhelming, she heard shifters fast approaching them.El shifted and took a minute to look down at her paws, she had shifted into her lioness.
Good call.She thought to herself.Not that she preferred one over the other, but her lioness was more Alpha, and therefore kicked more lion ass than her panther seemed to.
She bared her teeth and stood her ground in front of Willow just as three giant lions came bursting through the woods.El roared a warning, which surprisingly brought them all to a halt.El blinked several times as she realized who was standing in front of her.
She barely managed the steps it took to rub her head against Ryan’s.Marcus and Shawn both joined in all of them purring as they reunited.El snapped back to reality quickly and shifted.
“Willow’s injured we need to get her to help and quick,” she told them.
Marcus shifted then asked Willow, “Will you survive if we take you back to the pride?It’s three days if we don’t stop?”
It wasn’t lost on El that neither Shawn nor Ryan had shifted yet.
“No,” Willow whispered.
“At the cabin, there’s a vehicle.Let’s just backtrack and drive her to the closest hospital,” El said.
“No,” Willow gasped.
“Shit, that’s right.Okay, if we drive we can get back to the pride faster though, right?”El asked Marcus.
“Of course.Come on, I’ll shift, and then you help Willow get comfortable as possible on my back, and we’ll go get the vehicle.”
El did as Marcus had instructed.As they all began to move back to the cabin, El’s mind filled with questions.She shifted since she was naked and walked in her lioness form in between Ryan and Shawn.They both somehow managed to make sure they were each touching her the entire walk back.El loved their closeness, but she still knew something was off.
Once they were back at the cabin, Persia and Leilani were just finishing off a lone panther.El hated to see so much death, but she knew that given the chance, any of the panthers that had attacked the cabin would have gladly killed her and her unborn child.
Ryan moved ahead of Marcus and met his mother with a snarl.Leilani cowered to her son, which shocked El, Leilani had never shown Ryan submission—it was assumed but never shown.El knew there was bad blood, and shit was going to go down, but not until Willow was healed, so she shifted in order to get everyone on the same page.
“Enough!”she called halting Ryan’s circling of his mother.
“Willow is injured, and we’re all going to get along long enough to get her back to the pride.Persia, grab the keys, Marcus will drive us back in your vehicle,” El commanded.
Even more to her surprise, everyone listened.El followed Persia into the cabin, and both women dressed so they could stay in their human form.Leilani came in right behind them and did the same and even brought some men’s sweatpants out for the guys.
“Leftovers from when we used to come out here,” she said in passing.
Once again, only Marcus shifted.
“You two are stuck?”El asked the other two.
“They need you to shift them back, but Willow needs us to get moving,” Marcus told El.
“You two can’t fit in your lion forms in the vehicle,” El stated the obvious.
Ryan and Shawn both snarled.El didn’t like splitting up after finally reuniting either, but it had to be done.
“I love you both, and three days will be nothing now that we know we’ll be reunited on the other side of this.”
El wrapped her arms around Ryan’s mane and sunk her face into the bristly fur.She inhaled his scent, wishing she could stay there forever.When she pulled back, he pushed his head against her stomach and purred.A swift kick from her baby alerted Ryan of her growing presence.Ryan’s eyes grew wide, and he looked up at El, who put a gentle hand over her small bump.
“She’s strong,” she told him.
